New design from Imagination Technologies offers yet another competitor in the booming mobile market

In the world of RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architectures the game is officially on. Imagination Technologies Group Plc (LON:IMG) today previewed [press release] its first 32-bit and 64-bit MIPS CPU cores targeting the mobile market, a market in which ARM Holdings Plc's (LON:ARM) titular RISC core has reigned dominantfor so long.

Lastly, Imagination Tech. is plugging built in hardware and software virtualization support in the upcoming core series. The company says its aiming to target "a wide range of markets, from mobile and networking to embedded and microcontroller applications."

Just how valuable is the mobile CPU market? Consider that ARM pocketed $136M USD on a gaudy 50.5 percent operating margin in Q1 2013. Imagination Tech. is likely salivating at the potential for that kind of licensing loot.

The one thing that's unclear is when exactly the "Warrior" cores will hit the market. Imagination Tech. offered no release schedule. Imagination Tech. is also winding up to the release of a new GPU core, the PowerVR Series6 core, which offers support for OpenGL ES 3.0 for the first time.

The accelerator (GPU was coined for the GeForce 256 and anything else capable the same performance) was designed by the team that would later form ArtX. ATI bought them just to get their name on the GameCube and form a second Radeon team with each team releasing a new part every year. Their first card was the incredible Radeon 9700 Pro that completely blew the GeForce FX out of the water and convinced ATI to use them for all GPUs going forward (probably folded them into one team). I've always owned nvidia GPUs but I remember cringing when a QuakeCon 2003 attendee smashed his ATI Radeon 9800 Pro to earn a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. :(

The problem with MIPS is that the binaries are huge!. For those who has been thru the SuperH vs MIPS "wars" during the PocketPC days, you will know why the SuperH won!. MIPs really was meant for "big iron" processors, so to optimise it for mobile would not really make sense. Imagination Tech can try but it is a "lost" technology not worth salvaging ....